The bizarre ending to the 2025 season of ‘Doctor Who’ gave us more than a mystery in whether or not the show would survive to actually tell us who Billie Piper was meant to be playing.
Good news: Doctor Who is alive. Bad news: Doctor Who is now alive and probably has to deal with one of the most bizarre cliffhangers in over 60 years of cliffhanging history.
With yesterday’s news that the BBC would be continuing Doctor Who‘s future after the termination of its partnership with Disney starting with a new Christmas special in 2026, the series now has an equally as important task to deal with beyond its continued survival: just who the hell is Billie Piper meant to have been playing in those closing moments of “The Reality War”, anyway?
Even before the future of the series was stuck in limbo for months, creatives involved in the series, from Piper herself to showrunner Russell T Davies, wanted to suggest that the returning actress was not necessarily playing the 16th incarnation of the Doctor, despite her regenerating out of departing star Ncuti Gatwa. Piper was not credited in “Reality War” as appearing as the Doctor, as has traditionally been the case for new Doctors, and there was enough going on with Gatwa’s regeneration and the reasoning process for it to suggest that not everything was as it seemed. And since then, any willing commentary that has been made about the decision is purely speculative, other than to indicate that there was not a clear plan in place as to how the outcome would play out, with no guaranteed future for the series.
But now that future is at least guaranteed. So while we now have a long wait until Christmas 2026 to actually see who Piper is playing, we have some suggestions… admittedly only mostly silly ones.9) Rose Tyler, Again
The climax of “The Reality War” was meant to be about the use of regeneration energy to shunt reality itself… but what if it didn’t just affect Doctor Who‘s prime reality and translocated noted reality hopper Rose Tyler into the Doctor’s place, and now she has to figure out how to get whoever they’ve become back?8) The Master
The last time we saw the Master, we did see him attempt to violently take over the Doctor’s body during the regeneration process.
